Escape, Strife, and Collaboration
by HKrisH
Summary: A Spartan tries to escape her base colony in an attempt to save her troops, but end up running into an unexpected sketchy UNSC captain. Who is he? He seems so human yet so alien. Will the Spartan save her troops from the Covenant barrage?


Author's Notes: This is a large stray away from what I normally write about, but in truth, I didn't write all of this. This was a collaboration effort that my friend Josh Loessberg-Zahl and myself (Holly Humphreys) put together over a span of two years (give or take a few months forgetting that this thing existed lol). It started out as a role playing story for him and myself in order to keep ourselves occupied when we were bored rather than going outside and doing something destructive, which we both had a habit of doing. This is and UNFINISHED work. However, I might be able to convince him to start up with it again at some point, so in the near or distant future there might be more. ;)

Word of advice, you might notice that there are portions that have a different writing style or portions that reference the character Spartan K215 or Kris more or that reference Alek more. If that portion is written in the point of view of K215 then that would be my writing. If it was written from Alek's POV then it was written by Josh. Please let me know if there are any errors here so I may be able to go back and correct them. As for Spartan K215's summed up bio, she is a Spartan-II. Her real ID number is 015, but because her real name is Kris, the other Spartan-IIs thought it would be funny to start using the 1337 version of her name which is K |2 1 5 or K215. She is not a Spartan-III. If there are any more questions concerning her character please ask me. If there are any questions concerning Alek's character, please ask and I will redirect the questions to Josh and get back to you as quickly as possible.

I do no own Halo or anything written by Peter F. Hamilton (as Alek's story was taken from his books I believe). My friend and I has merely taken own fan-made characters and worked them around the stories of Halo and the universe Mr. Hamilton has created to fit within those tales. Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for your support regarding my other work as well as this collaboration effort.

ESCAPE, STRIFE, AND COLLABORATION

By:Holly Humphreys and Joshua Loessberg-Zahl

There was gun fire everywhere... All that she could hear. She turned to the left and opened fire on a small party of grunts; six shots from the battle riffle and six grunts down for the count. The rain was throwing off her motion tracking and making it impossible to track her enemies. _'Going to have to rely on common sense...'_ A small rustling; _'There!' _She turned and fired up at the tree-a jackal sniper fell down, dead She heard the marines scattered around the forest, their guns firing rapidly. "Status report!" Kris yelled into the COM. All lights came back green. "Good..." But she seemed to be a bit worried._ 'Where is he...?'_ She thought to herself; Footsteps! She turned around again and fired her duel magnums5 times each one after the other and took out the Elite's shield that had tried to flank her. "Good to see you again, Rokar..." She muttered. The Elite bowed his head. "Hello, Demon..." He pulled out his energy sword. "Unfortunately for you, worthy adversary, this is the last time we will see each other..." What passed for a smirk in the Elit4e race appeared upon his mandibles; all Kris could do was duck, roll and hide behind the foliage. "Where are you, Demon!" Rokar yelled. Kris was in no shape to go against an Elite right now. She checked her vitals; increased heart rate, multiple fractures... She had to come up with a plan and fast.

Alek ran through the dense creepers, rain sizzling on his shields. His broken arm began to ache through the solid electromuscle and he told his os to shut off the pain receptors in his arm. The metal bands were the only thing keeping his arm from sagging limply at his side and getting in the way. Alek had been tracking an Elite with a stealth generator, the rain requiring him to stay within 20 yards of the target to acquire the heat signature. "damn" he swore under his breath as it disappeared into the haze, he needed it to stop long enough to get in that one fatal shot. His heat sensors reacquired, except this target was much too close. Only ten feet away a lone Elite advanced on a damaged Spartan. Alek had the wrong angle to hit and disable the shield generator. He would just have to give it a shot and try to burn through the shields despite the risk of overloading his own weapons. Two blindingly bright pencil thin beams of superheated ions shot out of his arms and struck the target in the side, causing the Elite's shield to send out bolts of red sparks to the ground in an attempt to ground itself. The huge alien turned away from the Spartan and began advancing towards Alek, who was slowly backing away while holding the beams in place. A mechanical sounding voice invaded Kris's private frequency, "Get him in the back while his shields are weak." Alek began to black out as the weapons drained their capacitors and turned to his own body for energy.

Rokar raised his sword arm ready to strike Alek down. Kris was completely shocked that a civilian, so she though, would be able to transmit on her Marine transmission. She was angry, but shoved it to the back of her mind. When she saw Rokar raise his arm, She did quick calculations, taking in the Elite's swordsmanship and the Covenant 'Die for the great Journey' motto, she couldn't shoot him, less his arm come back down on Alek. She processed this within a second and at immense speed, charged towards Rokar on his left, tackling him to the ground and breaking his right arm as he fell. The Elite was unconscious. Kris slowly got up and took a look at the man before her. The rain on her visor obscured her vision for the moment, along with the shock that she pushed back. "C'mon..." She mumbled and picked him up. "Beta team! Gamma troops! Foxtrot! Rendezvous at the LZ NOW! Abort mission!" Her voice was stern over the COM unit.

The world faded slowly from black to gray, then swam back into sharp focus around Alek, accompanied by the return of the shooting pain in his broken right arm. He was looking up at the bottom of a Spartan helmet, the forest canopy rushing by at a surprising rate overhead. He ran a quick system check and found that along with the rest of his weapon systems that had burned out in the crash, the micro circuitry of one of his remaining shield dumps (beam weapon, used to overload shields, but will kill someone unshielded if used correctly) had been over heated and was completely useless. When he passed out, all nonessential systems had shut down to avoid detection so he began rebooting. The mechanical voice returned to Kris's com channel. "That was more than a little close..."

Kris snarled to herself as she opened up a private COM channel to the man she now carried in her arms. "How did you get on my private channel? This is reserved for Spartans and designated Marines only and you aren't on my checklist." She received green lights on her status report that all Marines were headed toward the rendezvous point. She was the first on there and the Pelican had already made a touchdown.

Alek activated his shields, creating a hard, slick surface a few millimeters above his skin. Then rolled out of her grasp, falling to the ground in a crouch facing the Spartan, who was a good deal taller than him. " I see that we're not wasting time with thank you" the voice retorted. "I was attempting to land at the UNSC base on this planet, when my lander pod was shot down over this nice little battle that you have going on" He motioned back in the direction that she had just come from "somewhere over there." Alek accessed the planet's satellite feed and was shocked to find that half of the com and weather satellites knocked out of orbit. "We should probably think about moving some time soon, enemy fliers are scouting the area." He shook his head slowly "Could you fill me in on what the hell is happening here?".

Kris's anger began to spike; she was grateful that her expression could not be seen through the visor of her helmet. She pulled out her shotgun and aimed for Alek. "Like I don't already know that... We have enemy battle clusters all over the area... I have everything under control." At that moment, one by one, Marines began to file into the pelican. "You are not a member of the UNSC and you are not authorized to be here." Her voice made it evident that she was not happy with Alek's casual words. Many try to mask their emotions, but to a civilian, Kris didn't care.

Alek stared calmly down the barrel of the gun in his face and raised his broken right arm, pointing it at the Spartan's face plate "Watch where you point that thing." He activated his second fission battery and the other half of the six small shield generators, making the air around him visibly shimmer an electric blue. A small chrome tube slid out of his lower forearm and extended three inches till it reached the base of his wrist. He redirected as much power as he could, without draining the shields, to his remaining weapon's capacitors making small silver lines spider web their way from the base of the barrel up his arm. They turned from sliver to an angry glowing red as they reached their full charge capacity. "I meant no offense." Alek's scrambled voice rattled as he drew a deep breath and let it out.

Kris didn't care about whatever was pointed at her. She just snarled a bit as she lowered her gun and turned to step onto the deck of the Pelican. "Time to take off, UnderDawn!" She said to the pilot. Kris never too her eyes from Alek; there was too much suspicion there. "Back to Gamma base!" "Ooh Rah!" The Marines bellowed in the background. The rain continued to fall as the ships engines roared. Kris finally turned her back to Alek and wandered into the ship. On the dark night, it was near impossible to see the direction the ship went, but Kris's anger still flew around the area.

Alek watched the Pelican depart into the pitch black night, "nice meeting you too..." He smiled, then turned to the sky, where patches of clouds were finally starting to break up. His com systems seemed to still be in one piece, so he send a message back to his cruiser in orbit, calling for immediate pick up. The crew was supposed to have one week planet-side leave, but it looked like that would have to wait. In all likely hood there wouldn't be much of a planet left in a few hours time.

Back at Gama base, an hour later, Kris had stripped her armor and was now talking with the Admiral. "Sir, we only have three bases set up on this planet, there is a huge Covenant force waiting just out of orbit-sending in ground troop to find something-and we have no UNSC battle cruisers within close enough proximities to be of any help. With all due respect, Sir, we have to evacuate Eridanus V." The Admiral listened intently to what Kris had to say but shook his head in disapproval. "We can't do that, K215." "Why, Sir?" "What are we going to do? Like you said, there are no other ships around to help us fight. Who's going to extract the Pelicans?" "But Sir-" "Spartan!" The Admiral raised his voice and there was a wavering quiet within the room. "Admiral, we have to try and get the Pelicans out. The Covenant ships will be distracted with glassing the planet. We have a chance to-" "No, Spartan. Our Pelicans cannot make a slipspace jump as you know and they will not have enough power to make it to the next colony." Kris stood with her back straight and her hands folded together behind her back. "Sir... Yes, Sir..." With that, she gave a salute and walked away, heading back to the barrack. When she was out of hearing distance, Direct Recon Hasley's figure appeared next to hers and they walked down the hall. "Kris,-" "Dr. Hasley, I tried to get his approval, but I didn't get it... Now I'm just going to have to save my team by myself." Dr. Hasley smiled a little at hearing this. After being recommission to work on Eridanus V, Kris had really taken care of her team; making sure that all of them were in good fighting condition and that they were always ready for anything. "But, Kris, how do you plan to do that?" "I'm at least going to try and get the _Spirit_ to fly far enough to get a strong signal... Odds are against us, but aren't they always?"

Capitan Alek's recovery pod screamed up into the sky, powered by liquid fuel boosters and a single H-CRAMJet(Hypersonic Combustion RAM jet, that thrust the small single parson craft into space at Mach 10. The pod resembled Hell Jumper's pod and had the same level of comfort(being zero), but was built for transit in both directions. He piloted the pod to the light side of the planet, opposite the gathering Covenant fleet, where his cruiser, _Pioneer_, had been waiting. He, himself had been heading down to the base to to tell the local UNSC headquarters of their presence, due to problems with the planets communication network, or so he had thought. The pod slowed and docked with the small cruiser, and as he stepped out he, he immediately began shouting orders to the bridge crew who had returned before him. "Get me full power on the shields and prepare to take us around the planet, once we have full crew again" He took a seat in the acceleration chair in the center of the command deck and activated the the tight-beam light relay, If they could get a clear fix on a ground receptor, then he could announce their presence and accept survivors from the bases. "Negative on the relay sir," the communication officer shook his head, "this was a relatively new colony, they were heavily reliant on the com-sats." "All crew on board," the ship's AI, a high level SI Subroutine, declared. "OK," Alek addressed the computer "take us around, and sound the battle stations alarm"

Kris stood by the Pelican, _Spirit_, clad in her armor and watching as her troops filed into the _Spirit_, the _Revolution_, and the _Cannon_. Bravo team filed in first and as watched the last of Gamma file into _Revolution_ and Foxtrot into _Spirit_. She checked all status on her HUD and climbed into the cockpit of the _Spirit_. "Everyone!" She started the engines. "Remember! This is against direct orders from the Admiral! We're leaving to try and live to fight another day! The Covenant will rue the day that they glassed Eridanus V!" _"Ooh Rah!"_ The said in response. "Bravo, Gama, you're following behind the _Spirit_. We're going to try and make for Sagittarius-the colony in the Quantrino system! Fall out, Marines!" The engines roared as the three pelicans exited the hanger and the atmosphere. The Marines all grasped their MA5Bs to their chest, anxious that the Admiral would decommission them all. Kris opened a COM link, hoping that any ship in orbit would hear them. _"This is UNSC Pelican class dropship_ Spirit _. We are in need of immediate extraction. Repeat, we are in of immediate extraction for three Pelican class ships. If anyone's out there, please respond!"_ Kris sent a repeated message. "I pray to the Gods that this works..." She mumbled to Dr. Hasley whose holographic form put her hand on Kris's shoulder.

In the tactical display on the bridge's main holo projector three small white dots appeared above the surface of the planet racing quickly away from the dark side in loose formation. The dots flipped green after a few seconds and registration numbers popped up in small tags next to each ship. "We have three pelicans heading off-world in our direction." The Nav officer stated. "Radio contact!" the Com officer shouted. "Put it on the speakers." Kris's message played, then repeated. Alek recognized the voice, but didn't hesitate "prepare to broadcast message, all channels." "Ready, sir." Alek leaned forward to the microphone on his display "Pelicans we read you and you're in luck, send craft verification and prepare to dock" Alek had the Nav officer send each of the three pelicans a vector to one of the four launch bays.

Dr. Hasley looked up at the display in surprise. She had never expected there to be another ship in orbit. Kris looked to the NAV point on her HUD and had a very intrigued look. "This isn't a UNSC ship, Hasley..." Hasley knew this. "Are you going for it?" Kris thought for only a moment. "We don't really have a choice... That ship must have a slipspace generator." _"Troops, we're going to dock on that ship."_ Once they docked, Kris was the first to exit the ship hoping to find the one in charge. One by one her troops filed out of the dropships. Kris walked up to one of the engineers and asked him where to find the commanding officer on the ship.

Alek watched the marines, led by the Spartan, enter the ship from the airlocks. The ship's interior was obviously not what they were expecting, the corridors were curving, oval shaped and gleaming white, unlike the usual boxy and angular UNSC ships. Alek leaned forward and stood up again and hit the com button. "Welcome aboard Pioneer, I am Capitan Alek. We are, as you can see, not an average vessel, but the first and last of a new prototype vessel. An officer will show you to the Cryo rooms when you are ready and I would like to invite your commanding officer to the Bridge in the center of the ship... That is all." The com clicked off and Alek watched the engineer point to the bridge on a map that projected its self from the wall

Kris made sure that the troops made it to the cryo bays before she started for the bridge. Kris walked next to Dr. Hasley as the AI began to run through the possibilities. "You don't know who these people are. They could be some sort of Covenant trick." Kris laughed. "I know that you're being cautious, but you know just as well as I do that these are humans." Dr. Hasley looked down in shame. "Yes, I know. Can you really blame me, though?" Dr. Hasley let out a small giggle and Kris just smiled unknowingly to herself. It wasn't much longer before they reached the bridge. They stopped at the door and saluted, holding it until they were asked to do otherwise.

Alek turned to face the Spartan at the door, no longer in the mud splattered civilian clothes, he was dressed in full uniform. "At ease" he said calmly. The rest of the bridge crew kept their eyes on the consoles, not pausing to look at the new arrivals. "Under normal circumstances, I would ask if there were any others on their way up from the planet, but circumstances" he motioned to that tactical map, showing the enemy cruisers moving into firing positions "are hardly normal." Alek paused for a moment. "Overlooking what went on on the ground earlier, Could you tell me what exactly happened here?"

Kris's hands twitched above her magnums. "Sir..." Her voice growled low, but Dr. Hasley put a hand on her shoulder and Kris relaxed. "Sir, the Covenant have been going to all of Earth's Colonies and glassing the planets after sending in ground troops to search the whole planet." She paused. "That's where I ran into you..." She looked around the deck and then back at Alek. "We have to get to either the Solar System or the Quantrino System..."\

Searching too, Alek thought to himself, he hadn't heard that part. "Have a seat," he motioned to an empty chair in front of a blank tactical display "We'll talk once we get into slipspace, but it's going to be a messy run" His voice sounded over the intercom "Strap down for immediate departure, It's going to be more than a bumpy ride" The ship accelerated away from the planet at an alarming rate, just as the first salvo of plasma torpedoes fired and arced after the ship. Just as the first one was about to strike he activated the patterning nodes in sequence down the length of the ship, then flipped them off immediately. the whole ship shuddered as the raw energy pulsed along it's length. When the wave reached the end of the ship, the final node blew out creating a massive electromagnetic pulse to radiate behind it. When this passed over the hot plasma torpedoes they burst apart like fireworks, peppering the ship with small manageable leaks. after they were clear of the planet's gravity well Alek jumped to slipspace and accelerated the ship further till they reached cruising speed. He pressed the all clear and the crew began to move around again fixing the new leaks. Alek got up and turned back to the Spartan. "Does anyone have any idea what exactly they are searching for?"

Kris looked up at the display screens; nothing but blackness. Good-they were in slipspace. She stood and when Alek came up to her, she forced herself to be as professional as possible. "No clue, Sir. Rokar has asked me something about the 'holy relic' but other than that, I have no clue. I can only assume he meant something about their religious beliefs concerning those known as the 'forerunners'." Dr. Hasley reseeded into Kris's watch, not really wanting to be around these two. Kris walked over to the Captain's station and stood to attention next to the seat. "What is our course, Captain-" She held the sentence in the air, hoping to hear the Captain's name

He was surprised by the forwardness of the Spartan "Alek." He searched the ship's encrypted file cache searching for a Spartan with the same dimensions as the one before him. Her file came up on his retinal inserts. First name Kris, with a average Spartan psychology file; loyal to the team, goal oriented, and a side note that was added as an afterthought, or a joke by some researcher read "dangerous when bored." Alek grinned to himself and cleared the page. "We are currently traveling to the Sol System. ETA 4 days unless something else comes up." Alek typed a few commands into the consul in front of him launching two slip space probes "Probes Away" the computer confirmed and soon a fuzzy image that bore a strange resemblance to an ancient waterfall display appeared on the tactical screen "You are free to stay on deck unless you would like to be put in cryo sleep or assigned a cabin."

Kris turned sharply to Alek. "Captain Aek... I would be honored to stay on deck. However, I am first going to check on my troops and then get some res-" Something beeped around Kris's watch. message came through her private COM unit, accessible only to Dr. Hasley. While Dr. Hasley sent her the message, Kris finished her quick conversation with Alek, telling him that she was going to take three hours of undisturbed rest and requests to be woken up after those three hours, less it be an emergency. "If you'll excuse me, Captain..." With this, she left the bridge and started her journey to the Cryo Bay. When she was far enough away from the Captain's ability to tap into her signals, Dr. Hasley had a small image of her face appear in the lower left of Kris's HUD. "So... This 'Captain Alek' is an AI?" Kris asked. Dr. Hasley shook her head. "No. He is still a biological being, but her has an AI interface. I don't know much about it, but I got a signal from him after you had asked his name. All I could find was that he pulled UNSC Soldier files.-" "You mean no-" Dr. Hasley interrupted Kris's panic attack. "No. Just the basic files that describe your psychological stability; forwardness, goal orientation, loyalty... You little problem..." "What problem?" Kris's voice was stern. She turned down another corridor. "Nothing..." Dr. Hasley muttered. "Nonetheless, You should be wary of this man." "Thanks, Hasley... I'll keep that in mind." Kris reached the Cryo Bay. All of her Marines were already in Cryo sleep. Many of the lab technicians looked in wonder as the armor clad Spartan walked through the lab. One by one, she went past all of her troop and check them off on her list. "Good..." She said to no one in particular. Looking to one of the techs., she said, "If any of their status' change, I want you, personally, to let me know. I don't care who gets in your way; tell them that the second highest authority on the ship has given you authorization." The man nodded, his greasy black hair getting in his eyes, behind his glasses. With that, Kris ventured off to find a cabin. Dr. Hasley designated the free ones on her HUD on the blueprints of the ship. "That was quick, Hasley." "I'm glad you think so, Kris." A small, simple chuckle escaped the Dr. Kris followed the AI's direction towards the cabin. When she got there, she was very surprised to see how nice it was; the entire ship was VERY up to date. The Spartan stepped over ot he bed and sat. "Privacy?" She asked. "Everything secured. All COMs jammed for the next five minutes." "Thanks, Catherine..." Dr. Hasley image appeared from the watch and there was a thin line of red on her cheeks. It had been some time since Kris had used her 'other' name. Direct Recon 'Catherine' Hasley... Kris brought her hands up to the sides of her helmet. _hiiiissssss_ It decompressed and let a small flow of brown hair come from its back, spilling over the Spartan's armor clad shoulders. Kris looked up to the AI with a smile. "A little help, please?" Dr. Hasley nodded and went to aid Kris. Piece by piece, the armor was removed; taking two minutes of her 'hushed' time. The last three were used by inspecting each one of the pieces thoroughly-or as thoroughly as one could do in the situation. The last thing she did before the COMs opened up again was set her armor to charge for a minute. "Thank you Dr. Hasley. Please do one last diagnostic on the troops," "Done. Status is unchanged." Kris smiled. "Thank you. I'm going to try and get some sleep. Only wake me if there is an emergency, but otherwise, I will be up in three hours." With that, the Spartan smiled one last time before turning onto her side and laying her head on the soft pillow. Hasley sat next to Kris on the bed-the watch was placed on the side table. She put a hand on Kris's shoulder. "No... Thank you..."

Alek looked at the master controls of the ship, before he thought about their unlikely passengers; he had to make sure that the _Pioneer_ wasn't being followed by any of the Covenant Ships that they had just encountered. Alek activated the com link to the ships SI subroutine. "Launch two probes into slipspace and have them move back the way we came for five minutes. After that have them remain stationary and emit one active ping a minute for another five minutes." This was a new strategy, that allowed the cruiser to remain at speed while still searching for others in pursuit." The Spartan has jammed our electrical sensors in her room. However the fiber optic camera and biological audio are still active. The ship had been given an ancient fiber optic video system and a state of the art bio-processor audio system so that the AI could maintain visual and audio signals in all parts of the ship even if it was severely damaged. "She's changing cloths..." the Subroutine stated blandly over Alek's inserts. "Record any important audio and discard the video, you pervert" Alek shook his head at the computer. "No ships are following sir" the Nav officer reported. "Thank you, keep recording information on the passive scanners." He addressed his Subroutine. "I want you to cut that room off from the rest of the ship's network, and keep constant tabs on her AI. If it so much as searches our flight plan, I want you to alert me and shut down the room's physical network immediately." Pioneer(also the Subroutine's name) shut down the Spartan's room's wireless node and set the physical switches on a hair-trigger. "I've got it done, sir." "Good, Ill also rest a while, wake me in an hour" Pioneer returned his focus to the processor core below the bridge and told the system to give him a real time processor usage and he settled back to watch for a spike.

Dr. Hasley had gone in to hibernation, but when the physical network was cut off, it instantly woke her from her slumber. Looking over to Kris from where she sat at the desk, Dr. Hasley contemplated on what or not to wake the Spartan. After a second of thought process, Dr. Hasley figured it would be better to wait until Kris had gotten some rest and had a chance to recoup from the recent depressive action that the Covenant had taken. Before Dr. Hasley went back in to stand by, she thought to herself, _'I swear I heard a whisper... There's got to be another AI on this vessel...'_

A few hours later, Kris woke up just before Dr. Hasley had the chance to even think about waking her. She stood from the bed and looked over at Dr. Hasley; the AIs eyes were closed and she seemed so peaceful. Kris stood there all of a second longer before Dr. Hasley looked up with open eyes at her creator. "Well, I see that your alarm wasn't needed." Hasley laughed a bit to herself. "Apparently not." Kris chuckled to herself as well. "Have you gotten any messages from the techs down in the cryo bay?" "No." "Good... That means that all of the troops aren't going critical." "However, Kris, I did hear a whisper a few hours ago." Kris looked up at her, not really in shock. "What was it?" "Our physical network was cut off. Not only that, but I think I heard some chatter from an AI COM just before it happened." Kris looked to her armor and snarled. "He doesn't trust us..." She paused. "I guess its even then." Without another word, Kris began to slide each piece of armor back onto her body and she picked up her watch. Before disappearing, Hasley's translucent form bore into the metallic visor of the Spartan helmet. "It's fine." Kris said with confidence. Every time she dawned her gear she not only had a deeper voice, but the confidence was unmistakable. "Keep chatter and snooping to a minimum. I have the feeling that Captain Alek may not want you buggin' around his ship." With that, Kris was off to the bridge again.

When she arrived at the bridge, Kris was not surprised to see that they were still in slipspace. By this, she was unconcerned. She walked over to Alek captain chair and waited to be acknowledged before she even said anything.

Alek looked up from the controls about a minute after the Spartan had entered and nodded in acknowledgment. "activate level three security firewall in this room's network node" he said through his inserts, to the subroutine. Level three was normal military encryption and security. The Pioneer's security protocol went as high as level six, which stonewalled everything except essential system info and required the essential information to present a specified code before crossing into the system. "Affirmative. I'll keep watch from the ship's core and see what the AI does." Alek nodded slightly. "If it decides to look around, don't stop it unless it goes for any of our sensitive data." Alek looked at Kris for a few more seconds then spoke "I hope that you rested well, we kept a close eye on your soldiers, and they all seem to be doing alright." Alek offered a friendly smile.

Kris stood there for a moment, looking straight ahead and her hands behind her back which was ramrod straight. "Sir. Thank you sir." Her voice held a contemptible tone. Is was not necessarily one of disrespect, but there was no respect within it either. After another moment, she moved her head to look directly into Alek's eyes, discerning what she could. "Sir, permission to speak freely?" Though she did not care for the man in front of her because of her natural instinct to trust no one, she still respected his rank and that was shone through quite obviously. Through her helmet, it was as though one could feel her burning gaze, scrutinizing them, yet holding the respect that any and every soldier deserves, especially one that survived a run in from the Covenant.

Alek looked at the armored soldier, and raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "Permission granted Spartan." He flipped control of the ship over to the autopilot and stood to face the Spartan standing before him.

"Thank you, sir." She took a silent breathe and then began. "Captain Alek, I would like to inquire as to why you were in the battle zone earlier this evening. I do not recognize you as any scheduled Captain to come through the area, nor do I recognize you as a part of the UNSC at all. You have no records in the UNSC data-banks." On her HUD, a green status light winked, meaning that Dr. Hasley was keeping track of the conversation (not recording) and she was looking all over the ships network to get whatever information she could get on this guy; so far all she found was a sum of made-up stories. Kris continued. "This conversation will be secure from all UNSC officials... I am not even supposed to be in space, let alone an unknown ship, so if this conversation were to leak out, this would be it for us both; I won't take that risk." After another second she said, "Who are you? Who do you work for? And... Why did you allow us to come aboard?"

Alek looked out over the bridge crew and thought for a few long seconds. "Come with me" he said and walked out of the room. They walked through the twisting hallways of the ship and eventually arrived at a circular medium sized room with walls curving up to become the ceiling. Alek walked in and turned to look Kris in the visor. "This ship is a legitimate UNSC secret research vessel as am I a legitimate UNSC captain, you will see that when we arrive at Earth." Alek waved towards the center of the room and a hologram of the ship's legal documentation was displayed. "However, I happen to have some help from an outside source. There is a planet, considered lost to the covenant by our government, that housed a super computer known as the SI." The picture of the document floating in the center of the room morphed into a generic glassed planet, but this one had something that looked like a metal forest growing out of the north pole. "It expanded its self after the glassing and now is hundreds of miles wide and over a mile deep. The SI gave the children of its creator's massive amounts of neural inserts and other 'upgrades' and now uses them as its eyes and ears in the commonwealth." The picture of the SI changed into a transparent human form with orange and green lines running from the base of the brain to weapon systems modified muscles and the other enhancements throughout the body. After a few second the hologram flicked off. "We were in the area because we were studying slipstreams in slipspace and needed to go down to the planet to see how they reacted to planetary masses in the real world. As to why we picked you up; it was simply the right thing to do under the circumstances and the SI approved it." Meanwhile Pioneer had been slowly following Halsey trough the ships data storage. She was currently going through the list of Alek's qualifications. "You know, all of those are real. The really interesting part is the three years missing between academies and captaining this ship."

Kris didn't respond for some time, especially because she was trying to figure out what Alek's last statement meant. However, Dr. Hasley understood completely. the sound of a sigh echoed from Kris's watch as the translucent figure of the Doctor appeared from Kris's watch. She crossed her arms and leaned her weight onto one leg. "Call off your little AI. The information I'm gathering is all for Kris's benefit; not the UNSC nor mine." After another second or two, Dr. Hasley continued. "So if there are three years missing between the two times, why don't you explain the situation to us?" Her look was very stern; no jokes and it had the icy chill that Kris's voice gave out.

Alek met the icy gaze and nodded slightly. The figure of a man about 5'9" appeared in the center of the room and walked over so he was standing next to Alek. The AI was waring baggy jeans and a leather jacket, open in the front, reveling a stained white t-shirt. When next to Alek with, who was still in uniform, and and stuck hos hands in the jacket pockets, the contrast was almost laughable. The AI spoke with a casual tone, towards the other hologram "You could have just asked and I would have been more than happy to show you anything deemed, um... relevant. And watch who you call 'little.'" He glared at Halsey with the addition of the last comment. "Thank you pioneer." Alek rolled his eyes slightly at the unruly Subroutine's choice of cloths. "I was being implanted with the capability to integrate him into my other inserts."

Dr. Hasley looked to Kris, and Kris looked back. For a moment or two, they were both silent, talking to each other through a silent COM that Hasley had ensured was secure. _'Do you think this is credible?'_ Kris said to the AI. _'Unfortunately, yes... Alek's position is legit. I've checked all other subroutines and then checked the validity of the AI Pioneer... It all checks out.'_ Hasley had a slight scowl at her repetitiveness but it faded sighed and opened her speakers up again. "Captain." Kris set off a salute and released it quickly. My apologies for the insubordination that occurred earlier." Dr. Hasley was not so formal; she crossed her arms and continued to examine the AI before her. "With reference to you earlier comment, yes, you are a 'little' AI. Any AI with a personality would and should be smart enough to program themselves to look at least halfway decent when in the presence of the commanding officer whether or not they know the person on a very personal level." A smirk played across her lips as she took one small step back to stand in the exact same position as Kris-hands behind her back which was ramrod straight. "Sir..." she added to the end of her little rant directed towards Pioneer

Pioneer's face hardened and he spoke to the AI in a calm, quiet voice "You forget your position. You are a primitive computer construct who came aboard this ship as our guest, meaning that you have no ranking what so ever on board. Knowing that, violated our records without permission and now insult the leading technological officer to his face... As for how I dress aboard the vessel that I control, that is between me and the Capitan." Pioneer activated a batch of chaos software and loaded it into the the other AI's appearance software, easily subverting her security measures. In the space of a second Halsey's image collapsed till she was one tenth her former height and turned a glowing lime green. "That's enough" Alek said, letting no emotion creep into his voice or face. "Please return to your room for now , and excuse us" He left the room at a brisk pace, brushing past Pioneer as his image faded from sight. "That was more than a little extreme" He spoke through his inserts, to Pioneer. "Must you always alienate yourself from any AI we ever meet?" He returned to the bridge and asked for a status report.

Dr. Hasley messed with her setting and erased the troublesome software that Pioneer had used. "Argh!" She yelled to herself, even though Kris was still in the room. "At least there one piece of technology that I have that he doesn't, the little son of a-" "Doctor..." Kris said in a soft but firm tone. Dr. Hasley looked at the Spartan with anger still controlling her, but she sighed and softened. "I know..." She said with a small laugh. "Sometimes I wish you hadn't installed the complete set of emotions." Kris smiled to herself, something that Dr. Hasley could kind of sense. Kris began to walk towards Hasley. "We best take his suggestion." She put a hand on the AIs back gently pushing her forward. The translucent figure rippled a minimal amount in the spot where Kris's hand touched for only a second, then it returned back to normal.

After making another quick check to the cryo lab, Kris was finally back in the room with Dr. Hasley. Catherine sat on the bed while Kris paced for another minute. The AI shifted uncomfortably, and this did not go unnoticed by the Spartan. "What is it...?" She sounded slightly concerned. "Nothing." She said quickly. Dr. Hasley looked at her hand, front and back, remembering the odd feeling of the other AIs intrusion on her software; what a feeling of violation... Kris watched Catherine, seeing the discomfort in her eyes. "I want you to do a subroutines check on yourself for any bugs, twice and thoroughly. When you're done, let me know. I'm going to take a shower." Just before Kris entered the head, she turned back to Hasley and said, "And COM silence, video feeds, the works. I want them all blocked. I have a feeling that Pioneer has a habit of messing with or little interferences. If he tries to disable it, let me know about that as well." With that, Kris entered the head and one could hear the shower from behind the door.

Kris came out of the shower, her hair tied up into a ponytail and her tank-top slightly dampened by the still wet hair. She just finished tightening her gun holsters when she saw, Dr. Hasley laying on her side upon the bed. Kris smiled. "Glad I put in a standby setting... Didn't realize I was in there for that long." She whispered to herself. She went over and tapped a button on the watch she left sitting on the desk. Dr. Hasley's eyes began to flutter open-the first thing she was was Kris sitting on the edge of the bed next to her, holding the watch. There was a quite minute where they just sat there, both smiling. "Status report." Kris said, finally. Dr. Hasley sat up. "No bugs. No remains of Pioneer's programs. Emotional interface functional. Program K_3 at high capacity." "Good. Deactivate all setting accept for the emotional interface, K_3, and COM interfaces." "Done." "I'm going to add more protection to your programming..." "Wha-" "No one can get to you, Catherine." And that was what she worked on for the next few minutes after that.

After returning to the bridge Alek ordered Pioneer to run another check for other vessels in the area. They still had another three days at least till they reached earth and Alek wasn't sure if they could make it without stopping to recharge the giant batteries that powered the slipspace node system. He grimaced, that could add another day to the trip, and he wasn't sure if their headstrong passengers would stand for that. It was stupid of Pioneer to overreact like that, but he had to admit that he would have done something similar of the Spartan had addressed him like that. "Umm... sir?" Pioneer's voice interrupted his thoughts sounding genuinely worried. "On the last ping a mass appeared just outside of our sensors range, if it's following us, it should become clear with the next ping." "Show me." On the main console three green dots showed up in a triangle formation, the ship ant it's two probes. Between the two probes and a ways back was a small gray patch. It as most likely interference they had followed standard UNSC protocol and chosen a random jump vector before returning to Earth. The hologram pulsed white for a second, then revealed two covenant cruisers following close behind _Pioneer _. "Give me a course to the nearest system immediately!" He barked at the Nav officer. The threat of a Covenant ship finding earth would be disastrous, they would have to try to take them on at the nearest system that they could pass off as the Sol. "Pioneer, wake the rest of the crew." The normal white light in the ship turned amber and the action stations alarm began blaring over the intercom.

Kris finished with her adjustments and looked up at Hasley. The AI activated her entire system. "Kris!" "What?" "There is a mass alert around the entire ship." She put her hand to her head. "There are Covenant ships following within the area around us in slipspace. All hands on deck!" Kris looked up in a mixture of fury and surprise. She bolted off of the bed and grabbed her MA5B. "Alert the cryo bay! Wake up Foxtrot troops only!" "Kris?" "Just do it." As she ran out the door, she grabbed the watch and slapped it around her wrist. Back and forth she dodged by marines and all the other hands racing to their stations. By now the tie in the hair had come out. She burst into the bridge and looked at the displays. "Captain Alek!" She snapped off a quick salute; she wore no armor and her voice was near unrecognizable. "Orders, sir!" She released the salute, stepping next to the Captain. Kris gripped the MA5B tightly, half hoping that she would be able to board the Covenant vessel and get back at the bastards for everything they have done to her.

The bridge was calm and peaceful compared to the rest of the ship, the alarm had stopped thankfully and the bridge crew worked with a sense of urgency.  
Alek pulled a portable ship consul from beside his chair and turned to face Kris "Get suited up first, then take your marines to the likely invasion points" He handed her the thin glowing screen that had several points on the ship marked with red dots. "Give me status reports through Pioneer. Go, now!" The Nav officer flicked on a secondary hologram projector and brought up a larger map of their area in space. "Sir, out best bet is pulling out of Slipspace here." He motioned to a small system sitting just a few degrees off their course. It consisted of five planets and a yellow star, much like the Sun. "Pioneer, plot course to the third planet out and give me ETA" Pioneer appeared in place of the chosen system, "give me a second..." His figure wavered and dissolved into numbers for a second "Ok, course plotted. New ETA is... 1 hour 24 seconds" A small digital timer appeared in the top right corner of everyone's man displays. "I want weapons to start charging at the three min mark, if we're lucky we'll get off the first few shots." Now all they could do was wait and pray while the clock counted down.

"Sir! Yes Sir!" Kris didn't bother to salute, as it was now a feild op. She raced back to her room and was suited up in her armor in less than two minutes. She ran to the cryo bay to greet her marines, who were already awake and getting their arms. "C'mon, Boys and Girls! We got Coveys on deck!" The marines in Foxtrot snapped to attention. Dr. Hasley was bust uploading the breakin points onto all of their HUDs and working on the easiest ways to get there when Kris said, "Hasley you're going to need to put up with this Pioneer AI today. Give him a status report every five minutes unless there is an emergecy then do it imiedietly!" Dr. Hasley hesitated for all of a second before saying with some resentment, "Yes, Sir," "Foxtrot! Move out!" There was a rumble throughout the hull of the ship. Many of the marines brought their MA5Bs and M6 magnums to bare, but that was just the first way of incoming Covenant. Kris sarted for the first possible point of entry. Another rumble. "Hasley, How close?" "Next corridor leads there." She showed a NAV point on all of their HUDs. "Warning; cloaked signatures coming from the door ahead." _'Oh, joy...'_ Kris thought to herself. She clicked the COM and spoke to her marines. "Foxtrot, we got scout's through the door ahead! Be ready and be vigilant!" Dr. Hasley made her status report to Pioneer. "Pioneer, This is UNSC AI Dr. Hasley. Status report-" She was being entirely too formal. "There are already Camouflaged Scout Elites in the perimeter" Kris reached the door and had her marines stand behind her-Battle Riffle in back, assault up front and then the leader. The door swooshed open and Kris stepped in, taking a sweep of the area. Dr. Hasley took a quick scan on the room. "I've got nothing." Kris watched her motion tracker for a second. She held up to fingers pressed together and directed Foxtrot A and F. The two marnies-Josh and Becca-stayed on either side of the group and went ahead. Dr. Hasley was silent. Josh was the first to fire the weapon as he saw a shimmer of bent light on his 6. "All arms!" Kris ordered. Those with M6 magnums fired one shot after the other into the Elite. The killing blow was a shot by D-Sam. The Elite fell, crumpled to the floor and now visible. Kris looked around for the others, hoping to see the slight shimmer of light or the wave of an energy sword. Dr. Hasley gave her report of the Elite and called for Pioneer to connect her to the Captain.

"They're boarding us while were still in slipspace?" None of the crew had heard of this phenomenon before. "ETA zero hours 30 min" the nav officer continued her readouts. Pioneer's figure sprang up beside Alek and began talking fast "The Covenant are using personal cloaking devices on their higher ranked storm troops(not from star wars, it's a generic term for a first strike unit)." Pioneer shook his head "If they don't get some serious help, we'll be swamped before we reach the staging point" Alek sat for a minute then hit a three button sequence on the controls in front of him. All throughout the ship, large two foot wide pentagonal panels seemed to etch themselves into the walls of the hallways, then slide backwards to reveal the heads of high powered rail guns that penetrated deep into the ship. "Are you insane?" Pioneer gawked "Those aren't tested, for all we know they could melt down or explode after the first few shots" Alek flashed a half smile at the Subroutine before turning back to his work "I've updated the firing control, so any signs of overheating or fractures in the rails will result in the damaged gun shutting down and waiting to be repaired" He hesitated again, then punched in his security pin "Transfer control of the targeting and firing controls to Halsey and tell her that she has full access to all internal sensors: visual, audio, and infrared" Pioneer's face soured for a second, but he held his composure and his normal annoying smile returned momentarily. "Speaking of which, message to the bridge" Halsy's form materialized beside Pioneer.

Dr. Hasley appeared with her right hand's fingers pressed to her temple and with her eyes closed. "Captain, as you may have noticed, we're in a bit of trouble." She opened her eyes and looked at Alek. "I'm getting some very strange readings..." She paused for a moment. "There is a large radiation spike nearby, but it's not coming from any of the Covenant escape pods, nor is it coming from us." She looked off into "space", gathering more data. "It's like its coming from an alternate space..." She seemed a little perplexed, but that quickly went away. "Though that's not impossible. I have a hypothesis... but no information to back it up. My thoughts are that the Covenant escape pods came from that alternate slipspace, escaping the radiation, or something more dangerous..." She looked to the Captain, hoping that maybe his "SI" computers could help with this.

In the mean time, Kris shot of four rounds from her M6D magnums forcing the red clad Elite to the ground. Sam had found a way to a high level, using his battle riffle to take out what he could at long range. Josh and Becca had their MA5Bs up to bare, letting off controlled bursts into grunts and Jackals. Kyle (C) used his MA5B to help Kris with the Elites. Karly (B) and Amy (E) used their M6 magnums to put the last shots into the little bugger's heads that Sam was working on. Dr. Halsey's voice came over the private COM in Kris's helmet. "I think that these Covenant are coming from a different slipspace." "What makes you think that?" "Aren't you getting that radiation signature?" "Yeah, but what does it mean?" And Elite charged towards Karly; Kris shot it in the back of the skull with her MA5B. "It means that these Covenant aren't coming from here. We're still in slipspace and-" Sam took out the last of the grunts and jumped to the platform below him to join the rest of the team. "- the escape pods are just looking for a place to hide. I have no solid data, but that has got to be the explanation for what is going on!" Kris thought about this for a second an then nodded. She looked to her team. "Foxtrot, to the next entry point!" They marched off in their previous formation.

Dr. Hasley knew that this wasn't going to be good. She was in the midst of talking to the Captain and Kris at the same time while she was trying to find where the radiation was coming from. "What is this...?"She muttered to herself.

Alek raised an eyebrow in interest. "An alternate slipspace, huh?" he said to himself. He shook his head CONCENTRATE, Ive got to worry about saving the ship first he thought. He turned to look Halsey in the eye "I'm giving you control of the internal weapon systems and sensors, any abuse of that privilege will result in immediate lockout and possible deletion." He began typing on the command console again. "Pioneer will show you how to interface, the guns should be able to provide you with reasonable support." He dismissed the AI and Pioneer, their images fizzling out like an old CRT screen. Alek grinned, now for the interesting part.  
He flipped on the tight-beam Hysradar transmitter. It allowed him to send signals via pulses through the substance of slipspace. The SI icon lit up in his virtual vision and he selected it, bringing up the customary testing pattern on his console, meaning that he was in direct communication with the computer based entity. He drummed his fingers on the arm rests of his chair "I have a very strange situation on my hands and I thought that you may be interested." He flipped a red switch next to his hand and the SI flooded into the ship's systems, activating specialized scanning systems and accessing all others instantly. "You and your unexpected backup seem to have the Covenant under control at the moment, but the radiation... We have never seen anything like it. It seems to be emitting from somewhere between slipspace and real space and shows heavy fluctuation." Alek continued monitoring the battles being fought within the ship on thermal sensors, the enemy was being slowly forced to give ground and the rail guns remained functional for the most part. "I'll activate an advanced Hysradar sweep, that should be able to show us where the radiation is coming from, but it will alert anything else in the area to pour presence" He pressed the button, the ship shook as the gravity wave pulsed out into space. He leaned back to wait for a return.

Dr. Hasley groaned at the thought of working with Pioneer and his degenerate disrespect for code and conduct in a UNSC AI's appearance. Nonetheless, she dealt with it in a civil way; using her tact interface.

. .  
You shoot down the Covenant pods while I work on the radiation spi-

The transmission cut off. Dr. Hasley quickly searched for the radiation traces; nothing. It had just disappeared. She went through every database concerning the spike but all just confirmed that it dropped off.

.AI,DRHASLEY .  
Just keep handling the weapons systems. I'm going to contact the Captain and Spartan K215.

Even when spelled out, Dr. Hasley's words were uneasy and a little testy. She beamed her image to both Kris and Alek. "Captain, Spartan K215, I'm sure you've both noticed that the radiation spikes have stopped. I recommend that we-" She stopped again hesitating for a second, going over the data and her eyes widening at the fact. "We have to get out of slipspace." She uttered calmly. "I understand that we will not make our rendezvous, but if we don't drop out now, there is a very likely chance that we will be hit by an explosion from that alternate space." Her tone was even, but Kris could hear the concern in her voice.

Pioneer materialized beside her shaking his head in mock wonder. "The nerve, ordering me around in my own ship *sigh*..." he snapped to attention, but remained in his casual clothes "but to our current problem." he summoned up a small map of their local space, including the ships tailing them, the incoming escape pods, and in the distance a bright energy spike, rapidly charging towards them "As you can see, we are nowhere near our staging point and the covenant will most likely realize that the planet we are currently heading towards is not earth if we choose to drop out now. However, the other option is just as bad, we stay in slipspace and are destroyed by the aftermath of that anomaly." Alek raised an eyebrow, "Thank you kindly for stating the obvious, now, do you have anything in the way of a solution to offer?" Pioneer flashed a winning smile "Always, I propose a compromise, wait till the last second to drop out. Hopefully our friends won't be as smart and end up consumed by the explosion." Pioneer paused for effect took a bow "turning out disadvantage into a win." Alek thought for a second. It did present them an excellent opportunity, but if anyone made a mistake, they were toast. "Opinions?" he asked to the other two, also giving the SI the ability to listen in.

Dr. Hasley growled inwardly but her algorithms were beginning to flare and she had to calm down somehow.

. .  
You're being shovanistic and your reckless ideas have a high probability of getting us all killed!

She thought for a minute, going through every option and then sighed to herself.

Unfortunately, you're option seems to be the only possible one with the least amount of consequences...

Dr. Hasley looked to the Captain. "Sir, there is no other reasonable option." However, she did continue to search through any other possibility and once more, there were none that were within reasonable parameters. "I vote that we go with Pioneer's plan." Through the COM came Kris's voice. "Sir, I'm getting some bad readings... Unknown source... Possibility of it being the previous... Covenant keep coming in escape pods... I've got two wounded soldiers from Foxtrot and Bravo and Gamma are telling me they have four wounded each... Orders, Sir?" Kris's voice wasn't panicked, but it was obvious that something was wrong.

. .

Christ, why so formal?

but anyway, I propose that you continue control of the interior guns  
.. and sensors. Be sure to keep Kris well informed, the infrared should  
.. penetrate their shields.

I'll enlist the help of the SI for the exact timing.

Alek frowned into the monitor. "I can have Halsey give you a virtual schematic of the ship with all of the Covenant tagged if she's up to it." He typed the request to Halsey "Keep in touch. If anything else develops, I want to be the first to know."  
The SI icon flashed and he tapped it once to activate it. Their calm, metallic voice emanated out of the implants in his inner ear. "We were not able to get a strong reading before the radiation source collapsed. On the frequencies that did return correctly, there was an imposable amount of distortion. The only explanation is an extremely strong energy source warping the fabric of slipspace... We will now commence with the calculations required to perform your jump." A small box appeared in the top right corner of all the readout screens on the ship.  
|[ETA: 00:15:23]|

Kris coughed; some blood stained the inside of her helmet. She looked to her left and saw Kyle trying to seal up a wound with biofoam. Amy covered him. Karly lay unconscious behind some crates and Sam was doing his best to shoot down the buggers before they could get to her. Kris saw a red dot on her motion tracker behind her and she turned to smash a wounded Elite in the head, smashing its helmet-less skull. Kris opened the COM to Hasley. "Doc, I need you to do something about the pods!" Bravo team clicked over the COM; five red lights. 'Damn it...' She thought. "Bravo's got another down!" She told both Alek and Hasley. Kris took another look at her motion tracker; nothing left in her sector. "Bravo! Progress!" "Sir... krrshh.. Last Elite do-... krrssh.' "I read you, Bravo. Gamma?" 'Same, Sir!' "Loud and Clear!" Kris responded. She opened the COM to Dr. Hasley again. "Status?" "We've got more in sector 5. I'm ordering Bravo and Gamma to the med bay and back into cryo sleep. It's up to you Foxtrot. I'll shoot down the rest of the incoming pods!" Kris groaned to herself. "Foxtrot! We have a few more heads to bash. Josh, you carry Karly! Amy, help Sam! Becca and Kyle you take the rear! Move out!" Kris cursed the day that the Covenant came to Harvest.

Dr. Hasley was working 30% of her programming just to find all of the incoming vessels and shoot them down. 5% of her programming was used to track Kris. "Why am I only working at 35?" She asked herself. She shot down one pod after another. One slipped through her range and made its way to the ship. "Status?" Kris's voice rang over the COM. "We've got more in Sector 5. I'm ordering Bravo and Gamma to the med Bay and back into cryo sleep. It's up to you Foxtrot. I'll shoot down the rest of the incoming pods!" And she did. She began to sift through the databases again to track the radiation. She watched the clock the SI had set up and it was dead on. "Captain, I recommend that we increase the shield support by 20% as a safety measure" She didn't expect Pioneer to actually do it, but it was worth a shot. She sighed to herself. Another two pods flew away from the ship and out of slipspace, completely destroyed.

Alek kept his face utterly calm and void of emotion, but beneath the surface anger boiled. They were taking over his ship, nobody captured his ship. The only indication of this interior struggle as the quite drumming of his fingers on the arm rest "Capitan Alek to SI, I'm going down to the battle zone, you have complete control of the ship" He stood up and the Captains station collapsed and folded into the floor. He addressed the bridge crew. "We are now under total automated command, activate the bridge defenses and hold the door at all costs, If anything breaks through proceed with self destruct protocol." They saluted and Alek stepped through the door, which hissed shut and locked behind him, high intensity force fields sprung up around it and a foot thick blast door made completely of mono-boned carbon slid silently into place.  
He selected the SI icon again "Requesting use of high grade combat sub routine" He felt the icy-cold, emotionless, program slide into place and immediately begin its work. All of Alek's reflexes were raised by an order of magnitude as the direct neural transmitters activated, his eyesight and pattern recognition doubled in quality as various retinal modifications came on line, the elecromuscles and shields came online and lastly, but definitely the most important, his targeting and weapon systems all came on line. He sprinted towards the battle area, nerves steely-calm despite the prospect of upcoming battle.

Sam was down. Amy had a broken arm and Karly was still unconscious. Josh was doing the best he could with a plasma rifle he had picked up after his MA5B ran out of ammo. "Sir! Becca's been hit!" Kris growled low in her throat as she looked to Foxtrot F. Becca was screaming in pain form the plasma burn from a grunts pistol. Kris pulled out her duel M6Ds and fired their overpowered shots one after the other as he raced towards Becca. Suddenly she saw a new signature on her motion tracker. It was Alek. Kris sighed in a bit of relief, but it was short lived as she began to fire shots into the Elite that came after her wounded soldier. Kyle threw a plasma grenade into a huge group of grunts and jackals. The explosion echoed as it shot bodies of dead aliens throughout the room. "Alek!" Kris yelled over the COM. "I'm sending Foxtrot back! I'm not going to allow them to have any more injuries form this! It's up to you and me, now." There was another cough and her suit instantly filled her injuries with biofoam. "Josh, Kyle, Amy! Try and get Sam, Karly and Becca to the med bay!" They did. They gathered their friends and tried to get away as fast as possible" Kris picked up a plasma riffle and a plasma pistol. She fired the pistol to weaken the Elites shields and the riffle to finish them. She only took out and Elite and a jackal before another Elite commander smacked her down with the butt of his gun. She fell to the hull of the ship with a large thud. The Elite was just about to strike her down that very moment.

Alek saw ugly alien standing over Kris and an evil grin tugged at the corner of his lips. He leaned forward, bracing himself, and pointed himself at the Elite. The capacitors located above his shield rack discharged directly into the generators while at the same time he fired a high energy plasma round from his shoulder, inside his own shield. The result was startlingly similar to one of the Covenant's plasma torpedoes. His shield bowed outward for a fraction of a second, then the power spike hit, forcing it to wrap around the plasma bolt and hurl its self towards the alien with the force of a bulldozer. The Elite looked up with a second to spare and emitted a roar of protest which was cut short as the ball of energy meshed with his own shield and discharged directly into his stomach, all but blowing him in half. "Too bad that only works once without blowing my own shields," he muttered, darkly under his breath as he ran over to see if Kris was ok.

Kris blinked a few times; her vision was fuzzy, but she heard the Elite's scream of terror and saw the bloody mess that was the result. Kris's shield alarm blared loudly in her ears. She turned to look up at Alek and a smirk tugged at her unseen lips as well. "Welcome to the battle, Sir." She mumbled. With Alek's help, she stood up and faced the rest of the hoard of Covenant uglies. She raised her MA5B and a Covenant plasma riffle. "Dr. Hasley!" "Yes?" "Load K215-MP3-X8BBWANA" "Yes, Spartan." Through the speakers of Kris's helmet's speakers played "Breakdown" by Breaking Benjamin, which would be considered classic rock in this time period. The Covenant looked to where the sound was coming from and they growled at the sound of the offensive music. They charged towards the two standing ready to fight. "Breakdown!" Kris laughed out as she fired her MA5B and Plasma Riffle at the incoming barrage.

Alek's virtual vision flashed with a confusing collage of targeting squares. The customary threads of silver spread from the back of his neck weaving up across his face and traveling down his back towards his feet, directly interfacing all weapon systems and muscles with his brain. He chose the nearest target and beads of light sparked down the silver lines making his exposed skin seem to spark. A manacle grin now locked into place, he opened up with high caliber kinetic rounds through his left arm and the shield dump with his right, both of which complemented by the occasional plasma lance fired from his shoulder(now unaccompanied by the shield bubble). As the distance between the two groups closed, the covenant opened fire adding to the maelstrom of energy and lethal bullets. Alek's shields began to scream as they took more and more punishment. He ducked for a moment to let them recharge only to be confronted by the ghost image of a cloaked Elite, lunging towards him. He had time to yank out a fission blade just before the alien hit him and they rolled into a death struggle.

Kris dropped her MA5B as it had run out of ammo and picked up another plasma riffle. She bashed it into the grunts and jackals that came her way. She saw the struggle on her motion tracker and quickly turned to Alek. With a swift pivot of her hips, Kris kicked the Elite off of Alek and then brought her fist down upon it's stomach. The alien coughed up blue blood and slowly died. "Kris; there's only six minor targets; all grunts. Quickly take them out and-" The COM quit as the closest grunt fired a round from its plasma pistol directly at Kris's head. The COM system shut down and shield alarms were all Kris could hear. All she saw on her visor was red blood. She turned and bashed the grunt in the head, luckily landing it before another plasma shot could hit her. "Damn..." She said. She couldn't communicate with Alek since her COM unit was down and her shields were in terrible condition. She stood there, looking around as best as she could, trying to look through the red goo that stained her vision. She shot round after round at the grunts, but they were timed enough apart that none of the shots killed them.

Alek noticed that something was wrong. Kris's shots were staggered and unconfident, more likely to miss than not. Only five more grunts damn it. "Awww, what the hell," he said aloud, overcharging his sheilds one more time. Their normal wine became a scream once again, this time flickering red and discharging bright blue electric arcs to the surrounding hallway emitting loud cracking sounds with each bolt. Pioneer's voice rang in his ears "What the hell are you doing? You can only do that once!" He fired a similarly overcharged plasma lance into the shield once more and used its momentum to push both him and Kris into a perpendicular passage. A torrent of raw energy shot past them as the shielded ball ruptured in mid-flight roasting the advancing Grunts, and giving the now unshielded Alek third degree burns on his back.  
An eerie silence ensued, foreign after so much battle, but still punctuated by bursts of gunfire from other parts of the ship.  
This gunfire slowly brought Alek out of a daze and back to reality. He rolled off of his stomach, neural inserts blocking the pain from his scorched back. He saw Kris's form sprawled beside him and moved into a crouch. "Do you need to go to the medical bay?"

Kris couldn't take the incessant alarm blaring in her ears. The helmet was shot anyway. She brought her hands painfully to her head and gently pulled the helmet off. There was a hiiiiiisssssss... of pressure being released. She coughed and blood ended up on the deck. Her face was stained and her hair was nearly red instead of its natural brown. She turned to Alek and shook her head. "No. You do. I'll be fine for another hour or so with the amount of biofoam I've got in my system." She gently got to her feet, wincing at the cold from the biofoam. "Dr. Hasl-" She stopped. She forgot that her COM was shot. She growled. The watch was in her room. "C'mon." With her helmet under her left arm, she offered her right hand. "The last ETA I saw was 4:52. We have to get us both to the med bay."

"Oh, right" He shook his head clear and allowed himself to be helped up. The clock in his virtual vision read 4:30. He activated the general intercom and sent his voice booming through the ship's interior. "General alert, all personnel report to the nearest safe zone and strap into full acceleration gear which will be provided" Thick gel vats slid out of the walls in the zones deemed "safe". He activated an automated readout over the intercom system "Estimated time of arrival 4:15" the mechanical voice rang throughout the ship. "Ok, let's go" He smiled calmly and ran down the passage after the larger form of the Spartan. As they ran, the hiss and grind of blast doors sliding into place could be heard reverberating throughout the ship as the remaining enemies were confined to their respective parts of the ship. The extreme deceleration of the emergency jump should be enough to take out the stragglers, but cleanup from a death like that was never pretty.

It didn't take them long to get to the med bay. Medical officers examined both of them; Alek in one room and Kris in the other. Once the Spartan sat in the medical bay, the doctor turned to her and had a scowl on her face. "Please, Spartan K215, take off your armor." Kris rolled her eyes as the doctor went back to searching through her tools. Piece by bloody piece, the armor was stripped and Kris was left in her tank-top and shorts. The doctor turned around once more and still had a scowl. "Put on the medical gown, K215. Haven't you ever gone to the med bay before?" Kris had an embarrassed smile and said, "Once." The doctor rolled her eyes and went back to searching through her things. Kris was uneasy. She wanted Dr. Hasley to be here, but alas, the watch was in her room. Kris stripped down and put on the medical gown. "Is this really necessary? I mean, really. My usual clothes would probably work better for an examination than this." The doctor turned around once more and smiled. "Just go with it, K215. We'll have your UNSC uniform up here for you momentarily. You should be out of surgery soon." "Surgery!" "Yes. You need to be stitched up and you have a few broken bones." Kris grumbled to herself. "Fine... I can only imagine how Alek is doing." However in Alek's room the nurse offered him a martini.

Dr. Hasley was finishing up her work-the last of the pods being destroyed, setting the right course for the jump-when she noticed Kris's signature moving to the med bay. "Oh no..." Hasley gasped. She quickly brought up Kris's status and went over the injuries. "Lacerations... Broken Bones... Burns..." Hasley sighed at that thought. She noticed that Kris had been sent to Med Room B. "I better check on her. Dr. Hasley opened up a video feed to the room to make sure that everything was going to go smoothly. She laughed when she saw that Kris wouldn't take off her armor until someone told her to. "Put on the medical gown, K215. Haven't you ever gone to the med Bay before?" At this, Dr. Hasley blushed. She was about to turn off her video fee when Kris reached of the bottom of her tank-top and- ETA 3:20! blared the warning throughout the ship. Dr. Hasley's eyes were still rather focused on the video feed, but she quickly closed it soon after Kris had gotten into her medical gown. [xD What sleep deprivation and boredom can do to a person. x3]

Alek downed the salty drink and a gulp, grimacing at the stinging aftertaste. He smiled at the wall, captain's privileges. The doctor, meanwhile, was applying a set of skin graft medpacks to his back. They would do their job over the next few days, and his neural blockers should keep the pain down considerably. He also had several broken ribs, but the electromuscles were designed to complement the healing process and allow him to still function. The shield systems were another story, they would take anywhere from five to seven hours to be repaired, during which he would have to lay completely still in the ship's automated repairs/surgery ward. He sighed and lay back into the blue gel rectangle that had emerged from the wall minutes earlier and readied himself for the jump. Kris had been worse off than him, biofoam and sheer willpower could only take you so far.  
[BREEEEEP! ETA 3:20]  
Pioneer had just finished the last of the minute calculations to perform the jump properly, now it was all in the hands of the SI. He decided to check on Halsey , who was also finishing up the last of her tasks before the jump. He took one look at what she had just closed and clicked hit tong in mock disapproval alerting her to his presence. He looked up, as if summoning the help of some unknown deity, and shook his head. "You get enough high power computer entities in one ship, and someone is always going to find the porn."  
[BREEEEEP! ETA 3:00]"ALL PERSONNEL TO ACCELERATION COUCHES"(a strange name for those gel bricks, for lack of a better term"

Kris groaned as the doctor instructed her through the process. She was irritated, but at least for a while, she would be able to get some rest. Not that she cared for it, mind you. With a heavy sigh, Kris prepped herself for the jump as well; she got into the acceleration couch and did her best to not let he lack of armor make the pain any worse.

Dr. Haley on the other hand was infuriated with Pioneer. "I was not looking up porn, you degenerate, compensating little-" ETA 3:40 blared the alarm as Hasley shot her own degenerate words at Pioneer. "I was simply checking on Spartan K215 and making sure that the strain of removing the armor would not further injure her." Hasley crossed her arms. Her holographic features held a strong blush that could be masked by nothing. 'Damn those human programs!' She cursed to herself. "As you said yourself, 'high power computer entities;' I do not require such..." She searched for the right words. "...visual stimulants as our human counterparts do..." Hasley's algorithms were flaring with her own embarrassment that she would have fallen this low. [xD I like Hasley's and Pioneer's interactions. xD They make me laugh.]

Alek was also doing his best to relax as he sunk the gel slowly enveloped his body. Nowhere near as bad as cryo freeze, but the damn couches always seemed to be a good twenty degrees too cold at first. Then he was enveloped and forced to take that first revolting breath of the chilled goo, he found that the best strategy was to get it over with and fill your lungs with the stuff as fast as possible. Once in his body the outer layer began to solidify and stretch, safely encasing him from any outside inertia.  
Though not necessary for the small turbulence of a normal jump, they would need them for this tricky maneuver. On the off chance that any of the enemies did survive, he planned to perform a complete about face followed by massive declaration to put _The Pioneer_ in the perfect firing position for its beam weapons. The downside was that the forces involved would tear any biological system (not in the acceleration couches) inside the ship to shreds. Alek tried not to think about it as he prepared to direct interface with the ship, the gel's conductive properties had the ability to let him interface with the ship in such a way that would put him in total control of most of _The Pioneer_'s systems.  
Line after line of code filled his head, and Alek was able to experience the ship as though he himself were an AI. He selected the basic weapon diagnostic, running through the final check

/weapon system diagnostic  
|foreward_weaponsystems

|-|subsystem rail_gun  
|-|-|[X5]  
|-|capacitors full  
|-|targeting online  
|-|interface halsey

|  
|main_weaponsystems

|-|subsystem energy_lance  
|-|-|[X10]  
|-|charge full  
|-|targeting online  
|-|interface pioneer

|aft_weaponsystems

|-|subsystem rail_gun  
|-|-|[X5]  
|-|capacitors full  
|-|targeting online  
|-|interface halsey

|  
|ult_torp

|-|subsystem ult_torp  
|-|-|[X1]  
|-|shield_charge full  
|-|capacitors full  
|-|beam_charge full  
|-|targeting none  
|-|interface S.I.

{when I get bored, things happen to me XD}  
Pioneer had, for the time being at last, decided to let the incident slide. "Whatever, just help me run through the final diagnostic with Alek". They moved swiftly through the ships system, prepping for the final seconds; locking doors, activating support force fields and other minor tasks.  
[BREEEEEP ETA 00:00:90 FINAL WARNING. LOCK DOWN COMPLETE]

Dr. Hasley did as she was told. She cursed herself for these feeling, her algorithms. She thought that she would rue the day Kris installed her "emotions." Hasley rechecked Kris's status. She opened the video feed to see Kris in the acceleration couch and she sighed. She had made a large mistake. Now if only the AI could erase the guilt that she felt . Why would she ever wish to not have the emotions Kris had given her? Dr. Hasley closed the feed and smiled to herself as she went about the rest of her work. She held up her clip board as she looked off into space, thinking, analyzing the data from the radiation spike. She checked the possible points where the radiation explosion would hit and she shook her head. "Already took care of that..." She muttered. ETA 00:60 blared the alarm. Now came the worst part of an AIs life; waiting. The clipboard fazed away as Hasley placed her hands on her hips. "Well..." She groaned. "Solitaire anyone? She asked herself. All of the work was done. She used her spare time to turn on file K215-MP3-X03-H2TOST. After winning about three rounds of Solitaire, Dr. Hasley checked the clock. ETA 00:56. Dr. Hasley groaned.

Pioneer spent his last few seconds playing a fast round of an archaic space based RTS that he had found in some ancient database. He had changed the controls to vastly increase the speed of game play and also allowed full 3-D interface. After finishing a round he checked the time.  
|[ETA 00:00:05]|  
He smiled and activated an audio file of his own, playi ng "Blow me Away" over the ship's intercom system. Then settled back and watched the SI set up their last few virtual triggers. the highly complicated timing mechanisms allowed precise measurement of the onrushing energy storm, creating a new clock for the last few moments.  
|[ETA 03:67:14]|  
Alek watched the milliseconds flick by and closed his eyes to eradicate any outside stimulus, enclosed in this sanctuary of silence, broken only by the sensor feed of local space and the small red numbers, no seemingly slowed as his direct neuro-transmitters took hold.  
The first cords of "Blow me Away" began to blare over the speaker, as well as inside of Alek's head.  
|[ETA 00:00:00]|

Real space was calm. The void between star systems seemed empty of anything but endless nothing speckled with tiny points, despite the terror in that alternate plane. Then it all changed, and pure chaos seemed to explode into being.  
A piece of that space, no larger than a quark, had begun to change. It warped and stretched as if testing the water, then exploded out of existence in a torrent of energy and matter. Several large, seemingly random bursts of energy appeared in real space as enemy craft were engulfed by the wave and slipspace was unable to contain the debris. When the energy bursts slowed to a trickle, two craft remained. One rapidly accelerating and the other decelerating towards it.  
Alek "saw" The Pioneer pull broadside the covenant cruiser, before the opponent could react he ordered Pioneer to unleash a salvo of the fully charged plasma lances, focusing the brunt of the attack on the dead center of the enemy. The covenant cruiser, caught unaware, was forced to maneuver for position, due to the concentration of weapons on the bow of the ship. This allowed The Pioneer a small, but valuable initial advantage, but the covenant would not go easily. Soon a torrent of small landers launched from the cruiser and moved their way towards Alek's ship. "Hasley!" Alek shouted over the virtual com channel "Load the high density titanium rods and fire on the incoming vessels!"

Hasley was already working on some Covenant connections when Alek had reached her over the COM. She split her tasks and began working on weapons systems. "Yes, Sir!" She quickly responded. She tracked the tracked the Covenant vessel while loading. It didn't take long for her to get the right coordinates. She fired the titanium rods at the cruiser and they hit with a very satisfying shimmer of the shields, which pulsed, trying to compensate for the damage they took and then vanished. "Heh..." Dr. Hasley allowed herself a little bit of pride, but that was soon forgotten as her other task was brought to the forefront of her mind; she had been monitoring the Covenant Cruiser's chatter. Every commander on the vessel was panicking and starting to call for back up. "Oh no you don't..." Hasley quietly said as she began to scramble any of the Covenant transmissions that were already being sent. She hacked into the battle net and worked her way through with amazing ease. "Let's see how you deal with this..." As "Blow me Away" continued to play in the background, Hasley sent that as a transmission over the Covenant COM unit. She could hear the screams of the commanders and the Grunts as the disdaining music each through their cruiser. "Ha!" Dr. Hasley laughed at them. She quickly keyed in the COM to Alek. "Captain, the commander of the cruiser has already sent a message to a flag ship. I've done the best I can but there are no guarantees that I was able to completely jam the message." The doctor was a little disappointed that she could do no better than she had, but she was just happy that she was able to jam their transmissions just as the titanium rod hit the cruiser.

In Alek's virtual vision flashed and shimmered, showing his cruiser and all its shots in green and the enemy and their shots in red. The plasma torpedoes began to fly, shown as large red blobs flowing across the gap towards _The Pioneer_. He did a few fast calculations. Their shields should keep the landers out, but simple point defense could only deal with kinetics, not these high powered energy blasts. As the enemy vessel moved away, their plasma lances became less and less effective. "Their backup shields are online sir!" Pioneer shouted in alarm. Alek grinned, the same grin as before, the one that usually meant some bad news for his current opponent. "Thank you Hasley," he responded to her previous message "We'll be gone soon." A small magenta icon lit up in the center of the virtual diagram of the ship "Let's try this sucker out". On closer inspection, one would see that the bulk of the ship was not made up of the twisting hallways, but that the center was a row of five high-yield fission generators and a single, enormous capacitor. The capacitor hooked directly into the rear shield generator, but the reactors had another purpose. Running the axis of the teardrop shaped ship, was the single largest plasma lance ever known to exist, protruding as a small spike at the nose. He clicked the icon and the whole ship began to realign its self till it was facing the enemy cruiser head on. Both Hasley and Pioneer noticed a significant drop in targeting power as the SI flooded into the ship, performing tiny course corrections and deactivating the main drive.  
The shields pulsed and the lance fired, but the effect was different than before, when the beam fired the supercharged shield warped straight out more than five times the length of the ship and made contact with the Covenant ship, opening a narrow-straight channel for the superheated plasma to flow through. the beam pierced the ship through its heart, its shield evaporating and letting the excess plasma disperse into space.  
Silence again, but now filled with an expanding nebula of energy and gases as the cruiser fell apart.  
"Status report on that back up call" Alek called out over the empty com channels.

Hasley looked all around for the transmission. She ended up hearing some chatter form a different ship trying to respond to the cruiser. Hasley quickly translated the language and sent it to Alek. "Brothers, we have received your distress call! Please respond!" The message repeats once more and then ends. Hasley internally smiled. She translated the humans' language to something the Covenant would understand and created a frequency very similar to that of the Covenant cruiser. Hopefully they won't notice its minor differences, but Hasley doubted that they would. "This is Cruiser number 65840 responding; False alarm, comrades. Thank you for a quick response." With that, the flag ship did not make any further connections. Hasley waited for another two seconds before talking to Alek. "Sir, Covenant flag ship deterred; Perimeter is secure; everyone is free to move around the ship once more." Hasley cut the COM for now. There were plenty of things she wanted to research, but because of Alek's interface with the ship and Pioneer watching so closely, Hasley would be unable to sift through the files for more information of the ship itself. 'This is very intriguing...' She thought to herself. 'I definitely must look into it later...'

With the Covenant ship destroyed and the reentry into normal space, those still in the acceleration couches were just now emerging, Kris being among them. The gel began to loosen slightly and as the Spartan emerged, she coughed and gagged on what she wished was anything but the horrid fluid that rushed from her lungs. She fell to her knees and placed her hands on the floor, seeming almost like the average human for a minute with a weakness and vulnerability; something that was short lived and Kris realized how much pain came from kneeling on her broken fibula and femur. She quickly stood and went over to the bed and sat down, hissing at her burns. 'God damn after effects of shock...' Her mind muttered to itself. K215 knew that she was to wait for the doctor, but she wasn't about to sit there any longer. She was already getting bored. She reached for her armored boots and leg plates, putting them on slowly and gently as not to further the pain. Next came the gauntlets to keep her left wrist from fracturing into a worse state. Kris looked about and gathered the rest of her things, most of it being rather heavy. She walked out of the medical room and began to walk down the halls. "God... Alright... Maybe some R&R wouldn't be so bad..." She was already winded from the two hallways she had already traveled down.

Kris had tied up her hair as she sat on the bed of her room, still in the medical gown. She held her helmet in her lap and, while still wearing the gauntlets, used various tools to fix her shields and COM unit. Dr. Hasley's translucent form shimmered from the holopad in the room and walked over to Kris's side where she stood. "How are you feeling?" She asked simply. Kris didn't look up as she finished up the COM system and started work on the shields. "You know what my status is." Kris's tone wasn't harsh, just concentrated. "Yeah, but I want you hear it from you. Any idiot can look at a chart and know that you really shouldn't be using your hands or legs at the moment." Dr. Hasley crossed her arms across her chest and she gave a mock smirk. Kris sighed as she stopped working. "Yeah, but that's so boring..." She complained to the AI as she looked up to meet the smirk with her own little mock pout. "Besides, if I don't finish this, who else can?" Kris smiled as she looked back down to her helmet and continued her work. Dr. Hasley smiled as well. "I'll be back to check on you later. I have some things to take care of." And with that, Hasley's form vanished.

What Dr. Hasley found herself doing was running through all possible medical supplies on the ship and what she could possibly use on the Spartan. A good portion of them would have no effect on her and the rest claimed things that they could not provide. Hasley laughed at some of the brands but kept looking. She informed Kris's doctor as to where Kris was and what her condition was. She also kept track of Alek's status as a side note, often checking to see that he was doing well and that his wounds were healing nicely. "Pioneer, what is our current objective?" She asked in a calm tone. She continued to look over her data as she waited for the AIs answer.

Pioneer put the RTS game on pause; he was fighting an AI level opponent provided by the SI. "Well, the first order of business is to make sure that our fearsome leaders have gone through a full recovery." He said with a hint of mockery towards Alek's rash actions earlier. "The ship came through the battle with limited damage, but the cleanup is going to extensive. Fun stuff..." He pulled up a live feed of crew members cleaning up the contorted corpses of the Covenant who had been practically deboned by the huge inertial forces at work. They placed all weapons and armor into a large crate and sent the corpses down an airlock, to be shot into deep space. "You really ought to have Kris stay in the med bay, they can have her fixed up in a matter of hours given half the chance." Alek was currently in surgery for the blown generators on his back and was also receiving several upgrades to his weapon systems. Pioneer never ceased to be amazed at the extent he managed to injure himself by sticking his neck out in the open.

"As for the next course of action, we set the randomizer and head home, unless Alek decides to check out that radiation source first" Pioneer smiled wryly and un-paused the game. "Nice trick with the voices, by the way."

Dr. Hasley listened to every word he said without interruption and smiled softly to herself as she watched the Covenant get dragged away. It was really a shame, due to how little the humans knew about the Covenant, but at least she would get to play with their armor for a little while. It took her a moment to realize that Pioneer had paid her a compliment regarding her transmission to the flag ship earlier. She smiled once more. "Thank you." She paused. "And I have to say, I would not have been able to bring us out of slipspace in such a robust manner." She waited another second before responding to Pioneer's earlier comments. "I would have Kris go to the med bay, but it would be pointless to tell her. I'll make her go once she has finished with her shiel-" Suddenly Kris keyed in on the COM. 'Hasley, I can't fix the shields without the right parts. For something temporary, I could use one of the generators from the Elite armor, but it will only last one battle with my armor. I'm going to have to talk to someone when we get back home.' She sounded irritated and pained. Hasley was obviously worried. "Actually, I may take your advice..." She muttered.

Kris sat on her bed, moving her wrist up and down slowly. She still wore her gauntlets and boots, but she winced every time she even attempted to shift her weight. Dr. Hasley's form shimmered to life in the room from the watch. She frowned at Kris's ability to mask her pain as she sat next to the Spartan. "Kris, you have to go back to the medical bay." Kris was quiet. "You'll be able to heal faster, get back into battle sooner." Kris smirked a little to herself. It was silent for some time as Kris continued to rotate her wrist. Eventually she did say, "Heh... Not even the Spartans' mother could get me to go to a med bay... and yet-" Kris looked at Catherine and smiled. At this, Hasley smiled in return. She picked up the holowatch and attached it to the slot on Kris's gauntlet made especially for the watch. Kris seemed a little surprised; she hadn't known that Hasley could pick up the watch. "Come on. I'll help you get there."

It took a little while, but Hasley got Kris to the med bay once more. She took her back to room B and set her down on the bed. "Now we're going to wait for the doctor and you'll be able to walk normally again in no time."

The Doctor Helped Kris into the gel like bed and nodded to a wall mounted computer. Pioneer's voice echoed into the room "Just pretend that it's cryo sleep, relax and inhale the gel slowly." He activated the bed and the gel directly beneath Kris liquefied, allowing her to drop into the center of the medical bed.

Pioneer checked her vital signs, and then injected a heavy sedative into the bed which knocked Kris out in a matter of seconds. "Here comes the fun part." He grinned at Hasley and he activated a large series commands at once. Pioneer's virtual "View" filled with a dense field of neon icons and he set to work.

The gel around Kris solidified to near titanium strength to make sure that she did not move in her drugged sleep, then tiny black fibers began to work their way out of the walls of the bed and move towards the prone Spartan. They reached her skin and the solid shell that held her in place then split over and over again like crazy fractal trees until each fiber was only a few microns thick and could worm its way into the patient without harming the cells.

Pioneer gave a low whistle as they fanned out inside of the soldier and began to give sensor readings. "Talk about combat boosted" he admired the modified skeleton and the boosted muscles. "Heck of a program you guys have..."

The fibers recollected inside the Spartan and began to concentrate around the damaged parts, weaving hemorrhaged tissues together and mending broken bones with extruded biological resins. Pioneer turned back away from his controls to Hasley. "Give her an hour or two and she'll be up and walking." he glanced at the monitor and winced at the number of highlighted damage zones. "Sore as hell, but walking."

"Had.." Dr. Hadley muttered. Heck of an opperation they had, she thought to herself. She watched the insument as it worked with procession, even working at some of Kris's old problem spots. "You think her engagements are impressive, you should have seen Kelly's or John's. Kris's genetic alterations didn't take full effect. That's why she was stationed at Eridan V." The AI just continued to watched, with bother her programming near pioneer and with her holographic form still bring projected from the watch on Kris's armor. She walked over to the gel bed and placed a translucent hand on the surface of the tube-like medical center. For once, her programming was not split into more than two directions. She was only focused on Kris and focused on what her temporary doctor was doing.

The fluorescent lights in the room were seemingly brighter than the sun right now. Kris looked at them for a moment and squinted. Until her eyes widened again and she flung herself up from the gel bed and threw her front half over the side to expel the horrendous, cold fluid from her lungs. As she coughed and gagged on th matter, she had to take a hand to rest on her ribs as she tried to curse and cough at the same time. Once the worst of it seemed over, Kris sat up in her tube and held her head for only a moment. She sighed and stood from the medical bed. She nearly slipped on the mess that she had just made and would have if it had not been for Hasley. The AI's programming allowed her to catch the Spartan by the arm, her form rippling for only a moment before stabilizing, until Kris could catch her balance. The doctor walked in at the moment with a clip board and was reading of some information before he looked up to see a sight he had never before imagined was possible; the foreign, obiously custom AI, artificial intelligence, computer program that should be unable to take a physical form let alone touch anyhig physical, was practically pulling the recovering woman from the sicky mess on the floor.

Kris looked up at the gawking doctor and grimaced from her stiff muscles. "Can I put my clothes back on now...?" She groaned, having a small fit. Hasley laughed at Kris's impatience. But before the doctor even answered, he simply nodded and walked out of the room as though he had seen a ghost. The Spartan look at Hasley for a moment who looked back. It didn't even occur to either of them that he AI's programming could be what sent the doctor flying out of the room. Hey were so used to it that sometimes Kris forgot Catherine was even and AI.

Pioneer eyed the AI with interest, he had seen her pull this stunt, but hadn't had the luxury of time to focus on it and had instead run a low level observation subroutine. He now booted the lower routine into his "personality" level and watched the recorded interactions. The bracelet seemed to project a mobile field of force that was being actively manipulated by the Other AI. He loved it, being able to appear to have physical form!

Pioneer manifested next to Hasley and the dressing Spartan, with his back respectfully turned (this was an essentially meaningless activity for a ship's AI due to their unlimited access to sensor data, but he wasn't totally tactless). "I trust that the surgery went alright?" He walked over to the bracelet which was projecting Halsey's and waved his projected hand across the lenses, watching the intense projection warp his own.

"Your interesting technology is creating quite a stir you know?" he smiled, pointing at the projector. "must be a useful trick" the wall sensors focused closely in on his outstretched hand as the wall projector shifted it through a full range of light spectrum and shape(an improve way of detecting energy eddies). The sensors showed bizarre distortions in the light output, some were bright and inflated, and others were stretched and twisted out of shape [consequently, causing strange fluctuation in Halsey's shape and color for a few moments] "Mind if I take a closer look?" he asked the now slightly annoyed AI standing behind him.

Although the strongly displayed image that the watch was producing from of Dr. Hasley, he image did seem to get slightly warmed due to the other holographic image being produce "over" it. Once Kris had finished with her dressing and she walked over to her gauntlets and boots, she looked at Pioneer with a stern expression. "Permission respectfully denied." She began to slip back into the bits of armor that she had brought with her into the surgery center. Dr. Hasley walked over to her and gave a bit of a suspicious look at Pioneer. "Let me explain..." Kris muttered. "The technology that I have designed Catherine with is something the rest of the UNSC has no clue how to replicate nor have I ever even had the thought to divulge this information." She thought for a moment and looked at her AI. "However." Hasley looked at Kris incredulously and shocked. "If I get to the point of trusting you enough to know that this information will not leak to your superiors outside of Alek or whatever else you work for, I might-" She put a lot of emphasis on the word. "- Consider it." The doctor then snickered and laughed a little to herself. She had a feeling that would never happen.

The two women began to walk out of the surgery center motioning that Pioneer could follow along with them if he so chose to. For the most part, though, the Spartan II walked in silence and just examined the holowatch that was integrated with her armor at that moment. When they made it back to her quarters, she simply removed her armored gauntlets and boots and placed them with the rest of her armor. She looked at the helmet that sat on her bed and sighed. "Hasley, do you think that you could track down any of the remaining bodies, if there are any, of the dead elites? Then check for any that have working shield generators on their armor?" "Of course." The AI smiled and began scouting the ship for any signs of such. "Pioneer.." Kris began then she paused. "What is the status of Foxtrot, Gamma, and Bravo..?" She was referring to her troops but then she paused again. "And Alek...?" She muttered.


End file.
